LOS ANGELES — Police fatally shot a homeless man on Skid Row during a “brutal” videotaped struggle in which a rookie officer cried out that the man had grabbed his gun, the Los Angeles police chief said Monday.

WASHINGTON — Seeking to lower tensions, Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. officials cast their dispute over Iran as a family squabble on Monday, even as the Israeli leader claimed President Barack Obama did not — and could not — fully understand his nation’s vital security concerns.

MOSCOW — Maybe it was Islamic extremists who killed Boris Nemtsov. Or someone offended by his love life. Or agents of a Western power that will stop at nothing to disfigure President Vladimir Putin’s image and drive him from power.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Residents of a small southern Missouri town struggled to come to grips with the knowledge that one of their own had killed seven people in a spasm of violence that ended when the gunman shot himself to death on a rural county road.

SYDNEY — Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia will lead a trial to enhance the tracking of aircraft over remote oceans, allowing planes to be more easily found should they vanish like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australia’s transport minister said today.

High above the spiral Milky Way, astronomers have spotted two clusters of new stars growing at the fringes of our galaxy. The discovery, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, appears to be the first such stellar cradles found outside the galactic disk.

SEOUL — The sharp fall in global commodity prices is starting to have an impact on North Korea, economists say, hurting a state that relies heavily on exports of minerals to keep its economy afloat — and its gargantuan military funded.

TYRONE, Mo. — An urgent 911 call from a young girl who ran to a neighbor’s home for help Thursday night led police to ultimately discover eight dead people across four crime scenes in a small community in south-central Missouri.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be in Washington, trying to spur Congress to cut short what he considers a feeble and dangerous deal in the works over Iran’s nuclear program.

Medical scopes suspected of spreading deadly bacteria are under scrutiny since an outbreak at UCLA Medical Center emerged this month. But problems with the devices were recorded years ago: The same type of scopes was implicated in a previously unreported outbreak of antibiotic- resistant superbugs six years ago in Florida that affected 70 patients, including 15 who died.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to Washington next week on a last-gasp effort to seal what he hopes will become his signature achievement: preventing Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon. But the centerpiece of the visit, a much-hyped speech to Congress arguing against the international community’s emerging nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, has been overshadowed by a damaging battle with the White House and electoral intrigue back home.

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SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — On a summer day in 1885, three Hawaiian princes surfed at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River on crudely constructed boards made from coastal redwoods, bringing the sport to the North American mainland.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock, a rising Republican star already facing an ethics inquiry, has spent taxpayer and campaign funds on flights aboard private planes owned by some of his key donors, The Associated Press has found. There also have been other expensive travel and entertainment charges, including for a massage company and music concerts.

WASHINGTON — The gradual increase of acid in the oceans threatens coastal communities in 15 states, although the reason for the impact — and what to do about it — varies widely, according to a new study.

When it comes to evolution, bigger might really be better. A team of Stanford University scientists analyzing the body sizes of marine mammals over nearly 550 million years have found that average body size has increased 150-fold.